Top 500 Erin Morgenstern Quotes (2025 Update)
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401. “Someone needs to tell those tales. When the battles are fought and won and lost, when the pirates find their treasure and the dragons eat their foes for breakfast with a nice cup of Lapsang souchong, someone needs to tell their bits of overlapping narrative. There’s magic in that. It’s in the listener, and for each and every ear it will be different, and it will effect them in ways they can never predict.”

— Erin Morgenstern

402. “As you walk farther into the room it becomes a field of endless streetlamps, the stripes repeating in fractal patterns, over and over and over.”

— Erin Morgenstern

403. “What is this?” he asks. Meaning all of it, everything, and trusting she will understand. “I will never have a satisfying answer to that question, Ezra,” she says and the smile that accompanies the sentiment is a sad one. “This is the rabbit hole. Do you want to know the secret to surviving once you’ve gone down the rabbit hole?” Zachary nods and Mirabel leans forward. Her eyes are ringed with gold. “Be a rabbit,” she whispers.”

— Erin Morgenstern

404. “And over the following months some of the articles are reprinted in other German papers, and eventually they are translated and printed in Sweden and Denmark and France. One article finds its way into a London paper, printed under the title “Nights at the Circus.”

— Erin Morgenstern

405. “They asked if I thought he would have done something – like jumped-off-a-bridge something – and I said I didn’t think so, but I also think most of us are two steps away from jumping off something most of the time and you never know if the next day is going to push you in one way or another.”

— Erin Morgenstern

406. “We like to hit all of the senses,” Lainie says. “Some more than others,” Tara adds. “True,” her sister agrees. “Scent is often underestimated, when it can be the most evocative.”

— Erin Morgenstern

407. “Zachary remembers the man lost in time wandering cities of honey and bone in Sweet Sorrows and the mention of the Starless Sea in Fortunes and Fables and wonders if all of these stories are somehow the same story.”

— Erin Morgenstern

408. “Skyrim-inspired sweet rolls and classic BioShock cream-filled cakes and maraschino truffle odes to Pac-Man cherries.”

— Erin Morgenstern

409. “He carries the light into places long unfamiliar with illumination that accept it like a half-remembered dream.”

— Erin Morgenstern

410. “He gasps for a breath his lungs do not require and around him the world breaks.”

— Erin Morgenstern

411. “You have no friends. And all of this is a fabrication. Your brain’s feeble attempt to preserve itself. Telling itself a story with love and adventure and mystery. All of those things you wanted in your life that you were too busy playing your games and reading your books to go out and find. Your wasted life is ending, that is why you are here.”

— Erin Morgenstern

412. “He attempts various combinations and finds a bee and a key on the coat of arms of a fictional magic school.”

— Erin Morgenstern

413. “Striving for uniqueness in a world of sameness.”

— Erin Morgenstern

414. “They live and they work and they play and they love and if they ever miss the world above they rarely admit it. This is their world, starless and sacred. They think it impervious. Impenetrable and eternal. Yet all things change in time.”

— Erin Morgenstern

415. “Even those who keep to their private chambers and their books emerge from their solitude on such occasions, and some are persuaded to join the revelry while others content themselves with observation.”

— Erin Morgenstern

416. “It won’t be the same when you get back,” Eleanor says. “Sometimes you can’t go back to the same old place, you have to go to the new ones.”

— Erin Morgenstern

417. “Keepers must have spirit and keep it aloft. They are made keepers because they understand why we are here. Why it matters. Because they understand the stories.”

— Erin Morgenstern

418. “Nothing but a dreamer, longing for something he does not understand.”

— Erin Morgenstern

419. “This is where we leave them, in a long-awaited kiss upon the Starless Sea, tangled in salvation and desire and obsolete cartography.”

— Erin Morgenstern

420. “Change is what a story is, after all.”

— Erin Morgenstern

421. “She talked a lot about eggs and keeping them from breaking.” “If an egg breaks it becomes more than it was,” Mirabel says, after considering the matter. “And what is an egg, if not something waiting to be broken?”

— Erin Morgenstern

422. “And so the son of the fortune-teller does not find his way to the Starless Sea. Not yet.”

— Erin Morgenstern

423. “They are enthusiasts, devotees. Addicts. Something about the circus stirs their souls, and they ache for it when it is absent.”

— Erin Morgenstern

424. “Ezra, I’m going to ask you to believe in a lot of impossible things but I’d appreciate it if you would refrain from using the m-word.”

— Erin Morgenstern

425. “For no mortal can love the moon. Not for long.”

— Erin Morgenstern

426. “I would have written you, myself, if I could put down in words everything I want to say to you. A sea of ink would not be enough.”

— Erin Morgenstern

427. “And there are always those who would watch Alexandria burn. There always have been. There always will be. So there are always guardians.”

— Erin Morgenstern

428. “A man this far into a story has his path to follow. There were many paths, once, in a time that is past, lost many miles and pages ago. Now there is only one path.”

— Erin Morgenstern

429. “By the time he reaches the farm, he is sure that the Bailey he is now is closer to the Bailey he is supposed to be than the Bailey he had been the day before.”

— Erin Morgenstern

430. “You are words on paper,” Simon whispers, to himself or to Zachary or to the words above them clinging to their respective papers. “Be careful what stories you tell yourself.”

— Erin Morgenstern

431. “When they depart, they shake hands and embrace like old friends, even if they have only just met, and as they go their separate ways they feel less alone than they had before.”

— Erin Morgenstern

432. “Is he a boy or a man? She is not sure how to tell the difference.”

— Erin Morgenstern

433. “They seek each other out, these people of such specific like mind... They sit over their drinks, smiling like children and they relish being surrounded by kindred spirits, if only for an evening. When they depart, they shake hands and embrace like old friends, even if they have just met, and as they go their separate ways they feel less alone then they had before.”

— Erin Morgenstern

434. “If the boy turns the painted knob and opens the impossible door, everything will change. But he does not.”

— Erin Morgenstern

435. “Everyone is a part of a story, what they want is to be part of something worth recording. It’s that fear of mortality, ‘I Was Here and I Mattered’ mind-set.”

— Erin Morgenstern

436. “You ask a lot of questions.” Tsukiko responds. “You don’t answer very many of them.”

— Erin Morgenstern

437. “One is proud, one collects one’s receipts, and even if one is a bit melancholy, one moves on.”

— Erin Morgenstern

438. “Passing off manipulations as tricks and illusion. Charging admission.”

— Erin Morgenstern

439. “I’m not sure I want to be in a relationship right now anyway. Things change.”

— Erin Morgenstern

440. “I hope wherever this all leads it’s worth it. Whenever that happens.”

— Erin Morgenstern

441. “And no story ever truly ends as long as it is told.”

— Erin Morgenstern

442. “The ancient stories that flames whisper to moths.”

— Erin Morgenstern

443. “Perhaps a face is too complicated to capture in words.”

— Erin Morgenstern

444. “Usted es un mago por sus propios meritos.”

— Erin Morgenstern

445. “That who he is, or who he thinks he is, is just a collection of references to other people’s art and he is so focused on story and meaning and structure that he wants his world to have all of it neatly laid out and it never, ever does and he fears it never will.”

— Erin Morgenstern

446. “A few include disturbingly worded marriage proposals.”

— Erin Morgenstern

447. “Inside the tower room the small girl looked at the darkness and the darkness looked back.”

— Erin Morgenstern

448. “I’ve spent a great deal of my life doing what other people wanted for me and not what I wanted myself and I’m trying to change. Impulse decisions. No shoes. It’s refreshing in a terrifying sort of way.”

— Erin Morgenstern

449. “Zachary puts the candy on his tongue. He was right, peppermint. No, steel. Cold steel. The story unfolds in his head more than in his ears and there are words but there aren’t, pictures and sensations and tastes that change and progress from the initial mint and metal through blood and sugar and summer air. Then it’s gone.”

— Erin Morgenstern

450. “He tells himself that it is not a bad life. That there is nothing wrong with being a farmer. But still, the discontent remains. Even the ground beneath his feet feels unsatisfying to his boots.”

— Erin Morgenstern